$130 000 USD

JULY 2020

GLOBAL

METAMASK

DESCRIPTION OF EVENTS

"I am a student with loans." "I kept my funds on MM, and I kept all of my funds there. My entire life savings was on there." "An amount large enough that I’m not comfortable disclosing it in public..." "As much as $130k." "I got my BTC wrapped a few weeks ago." "It’s actually Brave’s built in wallet. I keep my seed offline and log in almost everyday."

 

"Crypto actually never took up much of my time and I'm always working since I have to support myself financially." "I actively use dapps, hence why my funds are there and did not consider a hardware wallet before." "I have an antivirus." "I use my account actively, but only to trusted sites."

 

"I woke up this morning realizing that I just lost all of my hard earned money and savings in about 2 hours. Someone got access to my private key (or at least I think so) and everything was gone. Somehow he/she knew what to go for first, took everything from there. Went into every single other platform that I use and withdrew everything." "Every DApp I mean. So it’s all from the same account :/"

 

"I think my private key was leaked somewhere. That’s the only reason I can think of." "I don't even recall having my private key saved somewhere or posting it online." "I know there is an almost 0% chance to get my funds back but I just need to know how do I recover from this. I am in so much shock that I literally can't think straight. Help."

 

"Things just got harder, but it would have been much worse if this happened later. I'm glad it did happen now, because now I know to be more careful." "Yes, it was dumb as well, and everyone kept asking "why don't you get a hardware wallet" even though it's too late."

 

"I tracked the coins and it left to another address. I don’t think it’s a UI bug and I don’t think they can transfer any funds back to me. I’ll still reach out though. Thank you"

 

"Yup I tracked them to an address. It’s not like I can do anything about it but just watch whoever took it spend it." "I’m pretty sure whoever has my funds was waiting for the right moment because they went for the biggest spot first."

 

"I was developing smart contracts and accidentally committed my private key. Even though I deleted it, that commit history existed and hence, they stole it. I should have known better and cleaned up that commit."

 

"I definitely messed up and will learn from it." "[T]hanks for the positive words, I know it will take me a very long time to recover this especially during these times."

 

"I learnt my lesson though, and it was tough as I lost every bit of funds I have left except for the ones in my physical cash wallet..."

Reddit user VanZuron reports having lost his funds (he reports up to $130k though gives no wallet address) to a thief. He later admitted that his key was exposed because he committed code which contained the key that he was using for smart contract development. It is extremely unlikely he has recovered any funds, since there is no indication he reported the theft to any authorities and he never published the wallet address.

HOW COULD THIS HAVE BEEN PREVENTED?

The majority of funds should be kept offline in a cold storage wallet, and only brought into a hot wallet when needed for transacting. It's a good idea in smart contract development to never use the same private key as your main wallet.

 

Check Our Framework For Safe Secure Exchange Platforms

Sources And Further Reading

 For questions or enquiries, email info@quadrigainitiative.com.

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